Yepa
by Sage Pagan
Summary: "I'm sorry the only thing you know about snow is that it falls white from the sky." A story of shadows and dualities. A different take on Julia Chang. Slightly OOC.
1. Blood

_**This one's been floating in my head for awhile. A different version of similar elements. ~Sage  
**_

* * *

"The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches."

- e.e. cummings

* * *

There's blood in the snow, long, slashing streaks of it punctuated with little red dots, like nosebleed trickle.

It's likely from Gabriel teaching another fool friend a lesson. Or maybe Gabe was just drunk and decided to show off his "inner desert warrior."

The stench of fry bread clung to hair and skin like sand on wet feet. Within the rambler, Michelle's trying to help Aunt Cora clean up the whirlwinds of Gabriel's twenty-first birthday party—not that age mattered to Indians when it came to drinking—and that included disguising booze, blood, and barf stink with deep fried fumes.

The blood's turned black in the snow, the frost devouring the oxygen red like the desert heat eats green.

Yes, it snows in Arizona. Sometimes our temperatures rivaled that of Minnesota's, to the Midwesterners' chagrin. They thought they owned the cold.

But Arizonians were all about extremes, both in terms of Mother Nature and human nature. We could have negative 10 degrees weather in the winter; we often suffered more than 100 degrees days in the summer; and we had the most racist sons of bitches running the state. Luckily for us on the reservation, we could choose to laugh most of these extremities away; sovereignty had its perks and so did knowing your ancestral land better than any meteorologist.

Laughter's the only medicine that kept the crazy in line, that separated _us _from _them_.

Wrapping the wool blanket closer around my body, I rose from the porch and poked my head inside my aunt's house. Now she's arguing with Mom about which type of beans to use for the "hangover soup" they were gonna force feed Gabe.

It's the same old routines. I retreated to my perch and all its wintry glory.

It's beautiful here. Terrifyingly so.

But spend your entire life in this place and you might make bloody snow murals too. You might stop laughing.

* * *

I tried convincing people that I could be normal. Boring, even. But even I wasn't allowed that.

I was one of the few of my tribe who attended college outside of the rez. Michelle practically shoved me out the door to pursue "big things," just as my cousins warned me not to turn into an apple—red on the outside, white on the inside. They forget that I'm part Chinese, so I suppose the correct term would be "orange," but whatever.

I was also one of the only human beings on the planet who turned down an all expenses paid scholarship to Yale. But before you crucify me, I accepted a free ride to Seattle University, where I was introduced to the ambrosia that is Starbucks (no endorsement intended, as I highly suggest you save your money and your brain from possible lifelong caffeine addiction). The incessant rain really put a damper on things though. As a high school senior deliberating where I should spend the next four years of my academic life, I remembered envisioning Seattle as a flooded city prowling with limping zombies, their skins sallow from dearth of Vitamin D. It wasn't too far from the truth once winter hit.

I still wondered why I studied there and not at Yale, or closer-to-home Berkeley, where the hipsters roamed rose bushed _calles_ in frumpy frock they called fashion. Maybe it was Seattle's coffee cults that did me in, or maybe I just thought Seattle was more genuine. I'd yet to learn that nothing in the world was genuine except for one's libido and basic survival instincts.

Needless to say, I excelled in school. I wasn't much of a socialite, but I got good grades, I never got drunk, I didn't bewhore myself, blah, blah, fucking blah, you know, all that goody stuff they taught you to do but never to be. Perhaps I too had become that putrid zombie hungering for sunlight. After all, I always came home for the holidays as pale as this Arizona snow, and Mom thought I was depressed, and I was sometimes, but not enough to put a blade to my wrist or make my grades suffer anything less than a B.

When I felt like being funny, I liked to say it was 'cause of the Chinese blood. When I was feeling Navajo funny, I blamed the skinny vanilla lattes that kept me up all nights, and the skinny vanilla blonde girls who thought to steal my GPA.

The irony was that I fell in love with a vanilla blonde, though he was a far cry from those Valley girls. The only thing he stole was my favorite pen, which he'd "borrowed" for an assignment. Yes, I had a favorite pen, and when you developed favorite pens, you became angry volcanic when you lost one.

The next time I saw him I demanded it back, but was surprised when he wagged it in my face and told me the only way I could retrieve it was if I let him buy me coffee. Everything revolved around coffee nowadays, even though everything hurt thrice as much when you were awake. I kept trying to figure out how he knew I would confront him about a damn _pen_, when every other normal person would let it go and buy themselves a new one. But, his English accent was hot, and I never thought I'd find blonde so tantalizing, so what do you think happened? We gorged ourselves on chai lattes, that's what happened. Three months later, after staged study sessions and too many Indie movies, I gave him my virginity in his apartment while Depeche Mode blared from his sound system.

It was awkward and painful and absolutely hot, just like everything else.

Then Blondie and I broke up eight months later.

After that I think I finally stopped laughing.

* * *

One year ago, we were in the bathtub together. Yes, the bathtub, just like in those cheesy romance movies, minus the rose petal flurries and candle votives balanced precarious on every slippery surface.

"Julia...Julia…"

"That's not my only name."

"Oh?"

He touched me underwater. I didn't shiver.

"I'm also Yepa."

There. I let him unravel me.

My mother said I was Yepa before I was ever Julia, as I was born during the most beautiful blizzard Arizona had ever seen—or so Michelle claimed. Everybody knew blizzards were rarely beautiful, especially in the desert. But, nearly a decade after my birth, I was named after that storm.

It's not uncommon to delay naming a Native child, nor was it rare for a child to be re-named; names were powerful. For a long time I was only Julia. Julia got me through second grade and mountains of paperwork. Julia was what the teacher called out when I raised my hand, and Julia was the name printed in black block letters on my laminated library card.

But one afternoon, when I was eight—moments after I'd pummeled Gabriel bloody for purposely tearing out pages from my favorite book—my mother saw in me that cool-headed, piercing strength she'd felt since my blizzard birth. She called it lovely. But I saw fear in her eyes that day.

"What does it mean?" he asked.

"Snow Woman."

"You mean like, the three snowballs with a carrot as a nose?"

"Quit playing."

Julia was the one he loved, the name he whispered against my ear. Julia was the one who coaxed perfection and compassion from her finger's tips, the one who studied hard in college and called sex "making love." Arizona summer.

Yepa was...different.

Like my homeland, I too possess extreme dualities.

* * *

Eight months earlier I was at a rez bar.

Bianca, a Hopi-Mexican homeless girl Aunt Cora took in, convinced me to join her in a midnight jaunt around town. Her fuck buddy Gabriel was out with his friends, and she needed a drink "badly" and didn't want to be alone with strange men. But strange men were Bianca's specialty. As I sat in the corner sipping my Coors Light—beer like water—she put her charm and her pudgy thighs to work. When I tried to rescue her from a man with arms like a tree trunk, I saw things I didn't want to see, but kept tugging at Bianca. Let's get the hell out of here. You don't want to do that, Bee. It's getting late.

Then four men were around me. One of them knew me by name; he was someone who didn't run with Gabriel, someone who knew I was dating a white boy. He didn't like that.

"Look at this trash," he sneered, his breath a cloud of alcohol. "She thinks she's better than us."

It wasn't the first time I'd received flack for dating outside the culture, so I ignored him and continued tugging at Bianca.

But he thrust his hand in between my legs, pushed up against the jeans and squeezed. I shoved him so hard he collided into the nearby pool table like a crash test dummy.

"You bitch!" he cried.

After I broke his wrists for good measure, I seized Bianca and again tried to drag her away; but the other three men flung me onto the pool table before I understood what was happening. Two of them held my arms held above my head as the third spat in my face and reached for the button of his jeans.

I cried out for help, screamed, thrashed and twisted on the table, cursed, pleaded for them to stop. Customers saw me, the bartender saw me; they raised an eyebrow and looked away. Turned back to the television. Turned back to their mundane conversations and toxic drinks. And Bianca laughed against the wall with another stranger.

Something shifted.

When the third man approached, now boasting hardened genitals, I kicked out with my foot and smashed the thing, like flattening stray tumbleweed. One of the men holding me down released my arm in shock, and I used this free fist to punch my other captor hard in his gut. In seconds, I was free.

But rather than running, I picked up a pool stick, broke it in half across my knee, and stared coolly at the remaining man. I invited him to come and get me, to come and finish the job his friends had started. When he did, a lazy smirk on his face, I stabbed one pool stick into his chest, where I knew that horrid heart would be, then pierced his belly with the other. He slumped to the ground and began to drown in a pool of his blood.

As for the man I'd emasculated, who was still groaning—weeping—on the ground, I straddled him and pummeled his face until I couldn't recognize it, until he ceased to grasp at himself and gazed at me with glass eyes. I spat in those eyes like he'd spat in mine. When I found the third man, he was cowering in a corner with his hands raised; I didn't care. I kicked him like I would a rabid animal come too close, again and again, with the steel tips of my boots. I took the 8 Ball from the pool table and smashed his head in. Again. Again. Crunch of bone. Sprays of red. Bubbles of spit at your thirsty mouth. The vengeful blizzard you thought you could tame.

Blood covered my fists and soaked my clothes, stiffened in my long hair. Copper or booze, it all smelled the same.

Now people were watching and, whaddya know, reacting. The bartender and another man tried to pull me away; I elbowed one in the nose, the other in the ribs.

By the time I decided to run, Bianca had stopped laughing.

* * *

For a week I was afraid to sleep. I drank fucking Starbucks like crazy.

But I should have known they would go after him. He was a brilliant boxer, but they still broke him bloody, so I broke his heart to make them stop.

Love wasn't the answer to life's callings. I didn't know which literati first conjured up that bullshit, but I learned the hard way that life was just blood. The Red stuff. All other variables erased, you lived and fought to keep Red inside you.

Love did nothing but make you bleed.

* * *

Lucky for me, Gabriel and Michelle slept like the dead.

I took a backpack of money, clothes, and food and started walking. It was three in the morning. A lot of the snow had melted and it was almost 50 degrees, so I pulled off my jacket, slung it across a shoulder and trudged to the makeshift bus station. The Greyhound made a half hour dinner stop at the Hardee's up here, the little grease joint they were remodeling, as if truckers and vagabonds cared about aesthetics and bleached bathroom tiles. Everything about this place had bad feng shui anyway.

"What'll it be, sweetie?" the cashier asked, the last word added without sugar. Everyone in the South was a sweetie, even murderers.

As I scanned the menu, she tapped her two-inch long fake nails against the counter and hummed a country song through her Power Ranger pink lipstick, as if the graveyard shift was like any other afternoon, and she wasn't drunk tired.

"I'll have the sausage and egg biscuit, and one of the apple turnovers," I ordered. I couldn't bring myself to look her in the eye, or anyone else's for that matter. It's been eight months since everything, but I felt like it's only been eight seconds. I expected her to recognize me and refuse me service.

Outside the box of the restaurant, the sky was black. At this hour, nothing's awake but the occasional semi truck bellowing along asphalt road, tearing across the steady haze of foggy city lights, which blinked like heavy-lidded eyes. It was lonelier than I expected.

Thirty minutes later I boarded the bus with the other zombie passengers and barely remembered to flash the driver my ticket. The bus cabin glowed a dim light blue; mothers cradled sleeping children in their laps, silver lines of drool stenciled across pouting mouths cracked from the cold air. A man whispered Hindi into his cell phone as another flipped through a Dean Koontz book, the pages illuminated by a measly shaft of light from the tiny bulb in the overhead compartment; a husband and wife curled against one another beneath blankets of sweatshirts in the uncomfortable upright chairs.

I chose a seat next to a man with his head leaned against the window; he's the only one who looked fully awake.

"You can't sit here," he scowled.

"I'm sorry, is it taken?"

"_Yes_."

I sat down and pulled my backpack onto my lap.

The man flashed me a glare, then looked out the window again. When the bus began to move, a brief flash of streetlamp light reflected a head of red hair in the glass, as well as a full, smooth mouth clamped into a hard line.

The redhead thrust his left leg into mine and kept it there. I could feel the snow lurching beneath my skin, but I melted it with a mouthful of apple turnover.

But when he pushed my elbow off the armrest, I shoved him against the window.

"Are you always this polite?" I snarled.

"Always," he smirked. "I told you the goddamn seat was taken."

"Hey, I dunno what kind of angst drove you onto this bus, but now is not the time, okay?"

"And why not?"

"Just…don't."

I returned to my apple turnover, which turned to cement in my mouth. I ate it anyway with carnivorous need.

"Are you okay?"

With that simple question he seemed to see the blood on my hands and the blonde in my memories.

"Of course."

"You're a bad liar."

"And what would you know about lying?"

"Everything."

It started snowing fat cotton ball flakes, the type that sticks to eyelashes and nose tips like cold morning dew. The man looked out the window once more and grinned, a big toothy one that took me by surprise. Was he fucking bipolar?

I'm one to talk.

"It's probably snowing like this in Korea right now," he said. "Who knew it could snow in the desert? Guess the impossible _is _possible here."

"Are you going to the airport?"

"Airport? Naw. I ain't goin' back to Korea, if that's what you mean. I might get shot."

He laughed as if that was supposed to be funny.

"Where you headed then?"

"It's a long story."

"It's a long bus ride."

He looked at me straight on, as if trying to read my thoughts, failed, then shrugged.

I liked the sound of his voice and the easy way he spoke to me, along with the injections of sarcasm and humor. I used to have that same boldness, that same lack-of-secrets luxury. Now I was afraid to say or tell anything. The police weren't looking for me, but I still felt like a fugitive.

"You should come with me."

He said it, demanded it, with that same assurance, as if inviting a stranger—a murderer—was something he did everyday. His fearlessness was a bit daunting, not to mention ludicrous, but then I remembered those trails of blood in that snow.

"Sure."

"So what's your name?"

I hesitated.

"Julia."


	2. Silence

"But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not running away."

- Francesca Lia Block

* * *

You're the one with the power, you know.

Even with Yepa in my flesh, the cold that's supposed to keep me warm, you know how to dissolve it all into a flowing, storming, docile mess. Maybe that's why you never saw her. Maybe that's why I felt perfect when I was with you.

All I do is wait and wait. Even now. I don't know what I'm waiting for until you smile at me or show up with that quirk in your hair, or call me at 2 a.m. and tell me you miss me. I don't know what I'm waiting for until I remember. Everything.

But sometimes I get so tired and angry that I feel like holding something small and fragile in my hands, so I can break it, close down on it with five fingers into my palm, like crumpling paper, smashing glass. Temporary power. Breaking something else to lessen my own breaking.

* * *

I might have broken his jaw on pure reflex alone. But between blurry blinks I saw it was just the Korean man, upon whose shoulder my head now unintentionally rested. He was shaking me awake with that stranger's touch-you-as-little-as-possible urgency.

"Oi!" he whispered in a low hoarse. "Wake up."

Jerking away from his touch, I dug my palms into eyes laced with salty cobweb sleep; a few warm tears leaked out. Maybe he didn't notice.

"Bad dream?"

"Don't worry bout it."

With the rest of the tears, I gulped down the water he handed me in a crinkled plastic bottle. His hair looked too much like the koi fish red of freshly spilled blood. Perhaps that was what kept me from believing he was attractive, even if some of the young women aboard the bus glared at my seat with envy.

"Julia? Are you okay?"

If he asked me that question one more time—

"Wake me up when we're in Los Angeles," I murmured, turning my face toward the darkness.

He'd roused me from a good dream. A good memory.

* * *

Hwoarang said he had a friend who lived "smack dab" on Venice Beach. He was right; only a strip of sidewalk separated her home from the sand and its Rastafarian skateboarders. The white stucco duplex shone blinding in the sunlight, its aquamarine-tinted windowpanes like bruises on pale flesh. I didn't want to ask what might happen to the place if a hurricane or earthquake decided to stop by.

It turned out his "friend" was a bronzed bombshell that made me look like a nun; reuniting with a long lost booty call hadn't been in the travel plans, but hey, I'd wanted spontaneity, didn't I? When Hwoarang introduced me, she needle-eyed me like a high school girl, as if I was worthy competition for her Korean mail order groom. I listened to her explain over fruity diet drinks that she owned a Capoeira school with her mentor (perhaps one of the dreadlocked loiterers I'd seen smoking pot outside the complex?) and that she had been "infamous" in Rio de Janeiro for her leg work. Judging by the look in Hwoarang's eyes, I didn't doubt this at all.

After a dinner of limp steak and broccoli, she assigned me to the tiny bedroom across the hall, where I could experience the perfect acoustics of every moan and scream from the master bedroom. Around two in the morning, I shuffled downstairs to the couch when the sounds of their lovemaking became too obnoxious to ignore. But even in the living room, enveloped in the sea-quiet of the cerulean walls, sleep avoided me. Faintly—or perhaps it was my imagination—I could still make out the soft love sounds of the redhead and our hostess; this time it made me sad.

I remembered how the blonde had made love to me, his face buried in the tangled forests of my hair as dawn melted through the slits in the blinds. I wondered if I would ever again know how it was like to have a man touch me, to have him hold me in his sleep as the warm rhythm of his heartbeat thudded against my cheek, like the crash of those waves on the California sand outside these shadowy windows.

Rising, I slipped out of the house and padded barefoot onto the beach and toward the water. Back and forth, back and forth, swallowing, sighing, a tireless dance, salted like tears. The moon, bright as sun and nine-months-belly round, gazed down at her mirror the sea, an undulating mirage of black frosted with silver. There was no wind, not even a murmur of a breath, but the water moved as if possessed.

Gasping, I submerged myself to the waist in ocean as cold as betrayal. But the night was warm and soon my shivering ceased. Something nibbled at my ankles. If I stood still and focused my eyes, I thought I saw schools of small fish dashing and chasing beneath the surface, like silver needles threading through bolts of water. Sand squelched between my toes and glued my heels to the ground as the waves tugged me toward that moving blackness.

_Come with us_. _Come with us and learn the secrets of deep sea, the most sublime form of your snow soul._

I gazed north along the coast, where the cold, misty beaches of Washington somewhere rumbled, and wondered if he wanted to hold me too.

* * *

Sometimes I woke up so afraid I refused to move.

Sometimes I didn't realize it was she until I'd already caused so much damage an apology or afterthought gift would never suffice.

Glancing sideways at my travel companion, a toothpick between his teeth, I wondered which of us was the one in danger. Though trusting him was a precarious thing, as that sparkle in his eyes never seemed to dim, I knew that Yepa would kick in to save my ass if Hwoarang ever tried anything stupid. With that frightening—but reassuring—knowledge, I vowed to try and be more open with him; he'd been open with me, after all. Too open, in fact, or perhaps they were just masterfully crafted lies. Men were never honest after all, even when they had nothing to lose.

I let him pick all the restaurants, let him talk and talk until his throat hoarsened and only forced him into the bookstores when he was too tired or too bored to protest. I forced Sherman Alexie, Tom Chiarella, and Cormac McCarthy on him—"I don't read"; "They're manly and funny"; "I. Don't. Read"; "What, you're not manly and funny?"; "Gimme those"—and we'd discuss O'Brien and Silko, Murakami and Morrison, even flipped through _Playboy_ and _Cosmopolitan_—"So where _is _the G-spot?"—anything literary or quasi-literary that would keep his mind off the journey. Declaring that the man had attention deficit disorder was an understatement. But I could tell he was trying his hardest to digest my literary junk food.

The blonde was never like this. His ocean eyes would stare straight into mine, wander off the walls when he became excited, and we'd talk about books and films until night drove us into one another's arms, two idealistic, naive artist-writers pursuing the wrong careers.

Hwoarang squinted through an _Esquire _magazinefeature, and when he wouldn't put it down, I knew we'd hit the jackpot.

"You do know I'm only putting up with this book worm stuff 'cause I like you, right?" he grumbled.

"You shouldn't like me." He had no idea how sincere I was when I said that.

"Well I do. You remind me of the boys back home."

"I'm glad you find me manly."

"Consider it the best compliment you'll ever get."

"Not likely."

"_Someone_ thinks they're hot shit."

I laughed. It felt awkward to laugh, but it spread like a disease when Hwoarang flashed me a ridiculous grin.

But during a different excursion to the bookstore I asked Hwoarang if his parents had ever read to him as a child. When he ignored me for the rest of the day I never asked about his family again—or lack thereof. Well, at least I discovered what he and the blonde shared in common.

* * *

When I was thirteen-years-old, Michelle wouldn't let me hike in the canyons by myself. She plowed through her motherly spiel, said the coyotes might get me, or that I might get heat stroke and collapse in some remote plateau and spirits knew if Ma and Cora could get help in time. I knew these lands better than I knew how to inflict a wound with my fist. But, ever the obedient one, even when I was angry enough to break something expensive, I sat outside on the porch like I had during Gabriel's twenty-first birthday and brooded in silence. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I just stared out into the sky and waited for the rage to ebb away. When I was angry I always chose to be alone, not because I was afraid Yepa might emerge—Michelle could take her on any day—but because silence always listened. Silence always understood.

When I turned fifteen, when Mom finally let me wander, I would listen to that silence and hear it listening to me back. It was a pregnant silence, round and filled with life, a constant, comforting friend that instilled peace and allowed for mining deep thoughts.

But _this _silence, on _this _road, the redhead beside me skimming his magazine with lightning-fire eyes, was so eerily deafening that I looked forward to the old woman-elevator music the bus driver played sometimes. I didn't want to listen to those deep thoughts, to those locked away feelings, hovering and buzzing in my head like a trapped fly trying to zigzag its way out of a room.

"You still haven't told me what happened to you," Hwoarang said suddenly, the magazine rolled up into a tube and shoved haphazardly under the seat.

"You haven't either," I stalled.

"Don't try and pull that. I'm in the States 'cause a friend of mine has my bike in Seattle. There. Refreshed your memory. Now, why are_ you_ here?"

"What are you, a journalist? Cop in disguise?" I smirked, only half joking.

"No, but I can be just as much of a hardass."

Scoffing, I glanced out the bus window, wishing for some reason that we were back on Venice Beach so I could feel those waves on my flesh. Instead, we were getting closer to Washington every day.

"You don't wanna know who I am," I finally said.

"Pretty sure I do. Come on, Jules. We're far away from the shit that happened to us. What, is it 'cause of some boy? Did some boy break your heart? Were you abused as a child?"

Then again, he really could be a blunt bastard when he wanted to be.

"I'll tell you a joke. Then will you shut up?"

"If it's funny, I will."

"This one's_ really_ funny."

"Then shoot."

I looked back into his brown-black eyes, into the nest of red bangs. _What's done is done. Keeping secrets doesn't change anything, least of all you._

"An Indian girl walks into a bar. She kills four men when they try to rape her. She enjoys hurting them. And then she leaves."

When I didn't elaborate further, Hwoarang spent several seconds trying to decide if I was being serious. Shock, incredulity, and finally, disbelief, crossed his face.

"What kind of joke is that?" he finally smirked, albeit nervously.

Then the quiet settled in. Night burrowed its way into the bus cabin. An hour slid by.

"You're serious," he murmured later.

"You said I was a bad liar, didn't you?"

Another half hour.

"The assholes had it coming," he added."It was self-defense."

"I wish I could believe that."

"You're not a bad person, Julia. That's what I believe."

He leaned toward me then and somehow, in one slow, smooth motion, managed to find my mouth with his. It was like a feather across my lips. I accepted the affection like I would a gift, a small parcel whose packaging and shape didn't mean much, but was a symbol of a bond; I didn't kiss back, and he didn't push for more.

I never did tell Hwoarang about the blonde.


	3. Rising

Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder  
Where it's so white as snow  
Privately divided by a world so undecided  
And there's nowhere to go

- Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Snow"

* * *

It was lava red and measured half the length of my hand. This was a predator worst known for the hooked stinger at the end of its partial question mark tail, and now it clung to my bed sheets with armored pincers.

With a panicked swipe of my arm, the scorpion flew from my mattress with a sound like seashells cracking. As it made contact with the carpet, its armor turned neon yellow. Like a fencer, stiff and poised, the scorpion brandished its pincers and stinger and rushed for my bed. Leaping off the mattress, I darted and twisted in zigzags to avoid its toxic sting, then turned the chase upon it with a vengeful grace; now the creature fled from me, knowing I intended its doom. We danced like this for what seemed like forever. When I finally smashed it dead with my fist, its sticky insides oozing from beneath a crushed skeleton, my heart was beating too fast.

I looked up into the eyes of a woman who suddenly appeared; she almost looked like me, but her features were skewed. The longer, darker hair, the thinner nose, the disappointment in her eyes, as if she'd wished I'd been stung. She gazed down at the yellow death on my hands, turned on her heel, and vanished.

The dream made me sweat. My bones and muscles ached as if I'd been running.

I woke up again to Hwoarang's gaze hovering over me like a moth. He knew better than to ask what was wrong. All he had to do was watch me sleep to learn the truth.

* * *

Sun in Capricorn, ascendant in Scorpio. At least, that's what the astrology section in some magazine said. Hwoarang, ever the helpful bastard, could only offer the usual smirks and snickers.

"Don't tell me you believe in that shit," he jibed.

"You're a Leo, aren't you."

"_Aries_, actually. Don't you forget that."

"I thought you didn't care about that stuff."

"I don't, but I also don't let people think I'm something I'm not."

"And what do you know about what I think?"

"I _don't _know. That's the problem."

I smiled, setting the magazine back onto the shelf; at least he was honest. I always found it amusing when people tried to figure me out. It's not like I was mysterious on purpose, or that I was anything special. People should stop trying to answer questions they didn't know how to ask.

"It's silly though," I sighed. "Being earth and water at the same time."

"Well, so far you're pulling it off. I like you all muddy and confused."

"You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

Hwoarang laughed, nudging my arm to cheer me up.

"It might be kinda cool to be a contradiction," he said. "Me, I'm just fire. I just light things up and watch them explode."

He'd forgotten that fire was also life. Fire bled warmth and devoured the cold, urging spring even in the deepest of winter sleeps. Whether I liked it or not, his presence comforted me, if not for the slashing reds in that look-at-me hair, then for the sheer life he emanated whenever he spoke. Some people lived like they're dead, but the Korean man was born with a flame in his chest, which seemed only to burn brighter with every hardship he encountered. Like me, he was a survivor, but he didn't need two faces to know how to live; he was as crude and genuine as anyone could get. He knew when to burn bad things into ashes, where I allowed them to smolder.

Maybe that's why I defended him so fiercely that night when we were cornered in an empty bathroom. The three men had guns and jagged smiles, and I knew this wasn't the first time they'd tried to rob an unwary traveler come by to relieve themselves.

"Julia stop!" Hwoarang screamed, but it was like I would not, could not, listen. After we disarmed them, our attackers held their hands up in surrender and flopped onto the ground belly up like a low-ranked wolf—but I couldn't stop. I wanted to hear them beg and cry, watch them bleed and bruise and break. I wanted to see that contrast of red on white tiled floor, of spilled life and ammonia. Only then could I be sure.

Was it true that some male soldiers obtained erections when they were killing people on the battlefield? It was almost like that. A surge of electricity shot through my spine, carrying with it that fleeting ecstasy bred of merciless power. If these men were allowed to ever stand up and breathe again, they'd repeat the same atrocities. She couldn't risk that. Besides, the endorphin rush was always nice.

"_Julia!"_

I forced one man to his feet and slammed him into the bathroom wall, his nose and cheek breaking from the impact. Hwoarang had already dealt with two of the men, who lied unconscious at his feet, and he was trying to wrestle me away from the third. It was no use, of course. I flung the redhead away as easily as I would a child. She was strong, and sometimes I forgot that until Hwoarang's head made a cracking noise against the linoleum. He winced as white heat ripped through his skull.

"Oh my God…"

Rushing to his side, my heart still humming with after-rage, I cradled his head between my hands so I could look at the damage, but Hwoarang jerked away and stumbled to his feet. Behind me, the third man slumped against the wall, unconscious.

Beyond the windows, sunlight seeped over the horizon like untamed watercolor, beginning as a throbbing cranberry crimson that almost resembled the color on my hands. The red exploded into a gold-blue sky. Hwoarang felt the day coming. His face was one of masked fear, but he knew things couldn't hide under the sun for very long, so I didn't protest as he stripped off my sweatshirt and tank top, flung the bloody garments in the trash as discreetly as he could, and shoved his T-shirt over my head. Bare-chested and quivering from shock, Hwoarang dragged me to the sink and scrubbed at my flesh; he washed off so much blood it seemed as if I'd been the one bleeding. He raked and rubbed so hard pink lines formed on my arms and neck and chest, his nails becoming black-red crescent moons.

It was almost erotic. I could feel Yepa pushing against my mouth. But I stood there looking in the mirror as he frantically cleaned me up, a gruesome baptism, my limbs as limp as those Seattle zombies. For a moment I forgot where I was. He scrubbed me until the red ribbons disappeared and I was as golden blue as that dawn.

When he finished, he asked me if I was all right. I didn't know, so I didn't answer, but he wasn't about to linger to pry out the words he wanted to hear, so we boarded the bus two minutes before it had a chance to abandon us.

For miles he wouldn't talk to me or look at me. I didn't mind. I was too lost in my own thoughts to try and follow a conversation.

How long would this go on? Didn't you learn anything from your mother, who thought martial arts would teach you to control that terrible stinger, to channel that blizzard temper into something good?

"Why didn't you just leave me there? Why'd you even bother?" I asked Hwoarang when we crossed the border out of Cali.

He took his time answering. For a few seconds I thought he'd never open his mouth.

"Because right afterward, you looked just as scared as I was," he finally murmured. "That's why you're out here, isn't it? So you can't hurt people."

I became silent then. I realized I was still shivering. Please don't look at me...

"No, Hwoarang. I'll always hurt people. Being here is just…a detour."

I hugged his T-shirt closer to my flesh, the black cotton still warm with his heat. He'd just about seen me naked. As soon as Yepa's there, it's over. For a moment, I considered apologizing to him about what he saw me do. Instead, I hunkered down into my seat and wondered how far away the next rest stop was; as much as I despised those parts of myself, I wasn't about to apologize for who I was, especially to someone I barely knew. But then I wondered how the blonde would have reacted if he'd seen the snow woman. Would he give me his clothes and take me with him and try to understand?

The only problem was that Yepa refused to reveal herself whenever the blonde was around. Perhaps it was because he was just that good at keeping me happily distracted, and at making me feel like I was safe when I wasn't at all.

The sun, now a defiant glare, pierced through the window and forced Hwoarang's gaze to mine.

"You just—exploded," he said, after some time. "I mean, I thought _I_ was violent, but you...you took it past self-defense. You don't seem like that type at all."

"Well, I am," I said. "Recall that I killed four men."

I knew who I was, or at least, who I should be, until Yepa decided life was better lived on the verge of death.

When their lives were in danger, some people were pushed to do things they never dreamed they were capable of doing. They went crazy with strength they didn't know they possessed. I just took it further and I always have. Why was it like that? Was it because I was afraid of being hurt, so I had to overcompensate? Or had I repressed some part of myself, some stronger being, for so long that just now it was breaking free?

How do you dismantle a part of yourself without killing the whole?

Or should you learn to embrace something venomous, as it has made you into what you are today? You are not completely bad after all, so what's to worry about?

"By the way," Hwoarang said, scratching the back of his head like he did when he was about to ask something inappropriately personal. "Who's Steve?"

Something in my belly ached and twisted itself into a knot, worse than menstrual cramps, worse than being punched in the gut; the feeling slithered up to twine about my rib cage and heart. I haven't heard or said or _thought_ that name in more than a year. It was sacred, like making love, like imploring God, like using the most vile curse word imaginable.

"Don't say that name again."

My voice came out as a snarl, but the redhead seemed unperturbed.

"Why not? You say it all the time in your sleep."

"I swear to God, Hwoarang…"

He didn't utter another word.

* * *

Last December, it was my birthday. I was walking in the snow with only my wool blanket to guard against the cold. The blonde was geared head to toe in the latest winter fashion: a trendy North Face jacket that I loathed; a teal beanie hat that made his eyes bluer and hair paler; a Ron Weasley-esque knitted scarf from his Aunt Anna; crinkled leather gloves that were soft when he held my hand; and Snow Beast boots from REI he'd bought two days before coming to the reservation. He kept telling me I was crazy. I kept unwinding the scarf he draped over my neck, and twice I threw his hat in his face when he mussed up my braids trying to force it onto my head. He clasped me in a bear hug, and wouldn't let me go until I agreed to wear the beanie.

It was like that most of the times. Peaceful. Dreamy-eyed. Disillusioned.

We hiked for two hours. The wind wasn't terrible and the falling snow was gentle, but the blonde shivered anyway. I adored the way his nose and cheeks turned bright pink from winter's kiss. Above us the copper-colored plateaus loomed like ancient sleeping gods, the gray skies their bedding, the cacophonic wind their pillows. The blonde was alarmed when he turned around and noticed paw prints in the snow; a large coyote had been stalking us for a good hour before giving up when we reached higher ground.

When we stopped at the small cave I used to frequent as a teenager, the blonde took me in his arms and kissed me. Soon we were shivering, but not from the cold. I think he was secretly grateful for my simple garb, as it was easier to remove when he pinned me to the ground and reached between my legs. I clung to him, afraid I'd be undone, as his heat melted me and made me sing his name, that sacred name.

There was something feral about making love in the cold. It made us feel more alive. It made us press that much closer to one another for warmth. Inside me he felt even more fragile, thrusting like a second pulse. With his lips at my throat I felt as if I knew the answers to every question I'd ever asked myself; with his mouth on mine, Yepa was silenced. Without one another we were as ordinary as anyone could get, but together we sculpted our dreams with trembling, determined hands. We danced drunk on illusions of happiness, on overpriced lattes, and hikes into the sky. We were novels unread; we were whores screaming misunderstood profundities. We were poets in love with our tragedy and in search for madness. Loving you in the cold was madness. Loving you at all was madness. It was beautiful. You took me there.

"Right here, right now, is all I want. Ever."

"Even the snow?"

"Even the snow."

He hugged me tightly, making me feel every hard muscle of his arms and chest. White as winter, warm as spring. I love you, and that's all.

Somewhere out there we left our footprints in the snow. Somewhere out there we made wildflowers grow in the ice. I wish I could find that trail again. I wish it were all that mattered.


	4. Blue

"Dislodged from family and self-knowledge and knowledge of your origins you become free in the most sinister way. Some call it having a restless soul. That's a phrase usually reserved for ghosts, which is pretty apt."

- Grace Krilanovich

* * *

The home-hopping Pueblo boy from New Mexico had hair black as fresh tar. When I met him he was nineteen and plain-faced but funny and full of sweet things to say. Michelle told me to keep the friendship brief, if formed at all. But as children of a found, lost, then found again land Pueblo boy and I kept each other sane, and it wasn't as brief as we thought it would be. Time didn't run normally here anyway.

We fidgeted with wild thoughts, forgot our uranium dreams in a lethargic education system and drank from dry creek beds. To pass the time we'd climb into his rusting pickup truck, Hybrid Theory blaring, and drive up and down the reservation roads with the windows down until the wind sucked out our laughter. Three hours to Albuquerque. Two hours to Canyon de Chelly in Chinle. Forty-five minutes to the Amtrak station we fantasized we'd someday use to get out of this place.

'Welcome to the rez! Shit, I need a drink.'

The roads here seemed to stretch into the sky. Sometimes you wouldn't see anything but desert until your gas tank was out. Sometimes suddenly a house was there, a weathered hogan or mobile home, like a ghost in the dark, the long dirt driveways lit by a single orange light. On nosebleed-dry days the windstorms spat dust into the windows and blew grit into the crevices of our molars. Pueblo boy drove with two hands on the steering wheel and grinned like a madman.

We drove into Gallup on Route 66, the sky black and the road a cold sword. We bought beef jerky from the 24-hour Walmart and drove back giggling and hugging ourselves from the night. At times we stopped at a mountain, a lake, at the abandoned metal finishing factory, but more often we just drove and drove and listened to whatever radio station had the best reception (likely country or honky-tonk). He told me about how his dad stayed at the casino all night, or about how there was "never any fucking thing to do around here." I listened and passed him the bottle of rum he'd found somewhere in an uncle's trailer. I told him I was sorry for his bullshit, even if I had my own heartaches and would rather be alone.

I tolerated because I knew that, like everybody else who wandered, he only sought compassion for his trouble. He dreamed, too, of finding inspiration and purpose for his ragged ways. And on the long road to such fantasies he'd found it in a person like me, who would listen endlessly to tall tales and drive on violent winds when nothing but running would do. He sought, too, in places like here, at the extremes of things, a last untamed frontier, where night coaxed confessions from mouths like magic. Here, where there could be admiration for his disorder, for his ill-explained love, for his darkness.

I was kinder back then, for I hadn't the heart to tell him the only things here were the vipers and the scorpions, the lonely people in their lonely heads. I didn't say that if he was looking to feel alive all he had to do was love and lose; no, he had but to _love_. This was a place where not even the stars listened, where the desert and the coyotes and the crows knew exactly who you were. You were judged not by how you intended or dreamed, but by how you fought back, how you smelled. Was that fear or valor in your sweat?

It isn't here, what you're looking for, I said, balling up a handful of sand and letting the earth seep through my fingers. I've looked, too.

Beauty didn't have to have meaning; beauty was not always beautiful. It was possible to tire of the sun. Maybe that's why I pursued the northern rains, where a grayer light heralded different shades of happiness.

His laughter was strained, and I laughed with him because I didn't know what else to do. At seventeen I was smart but incompletely present. I knew some things weren't right. I knew there would always be two.

One night, after too many hollow kisses, he told me he loved me. I laughed at this foolishness, but when I saw the hurt in his eyes I told him I loved him back, as if by saying it I could wish it true.

Maybe I was just like him after all.

* * *

Hwoarang watched me tell him about the Pueblo boy and he tilted his head back and swallowed the rest of his Coke. We were in Portland waiting for the next bus. It was raining again.

"That's it? That's your only ex besides that dude from college?" he scoffed.

"You were expecting more?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, look at you. You're a fox!"

"Watch it."

The redhead grinned, crushing the plastic bottle between his hands. "So what do you look for in a man?"

"Why are we having this conversation?"

"Because I find you terribly interesting, and I want to gradually win your heart, fuck you blind and then leave you for dead."

"Thought so," I replied, unable to hide a smile.

"Come on, Julia. But you _are_ interesting."

Well, that's one way to describe it.

I managed another smile, but looked away when I saw the expression on his face. It was of genuine intrigue, and I knew rare were the moments when a man like Hwoarang would lean in to listen rather than roar. Still, I told him nothing.

The next Greyhound would take us to Seattle, but that wasn't for another several hours. So, Hwoarang and I took the TriMet to the Portland Zoo to watch wolves pace lazily along the edges of their fences. The hunt had been force-fed out of them—or so I thought.

"Julia," Hwoarang murmured, his eyes widening. "Straight ahead."

I looked where the redhead pointed. The children around me gushed and squealed excitement as they watched two she-wolves, both overweight from too much lounging in manmade plain, seize one another with fang and claw. The black one had the gray wolf by the throat, and I knew she intended to kill her. Blood dripped from between her teeth and dotted the dead grass beneath her paws.

But, at the last moment, the gray wolf struggled free, her pale coat ragged and blood-soaked down her chest. She was pathetic looking, her neck missing clumps of fur and one eye half-shut from a long gash down the side of her head. But instead of baring her belly in surrender she lunged for the black creature and the duel began again.

Why they fought no one knew. They were supposed to be controlled, after all, in this zoo with glass panels and bald earth. This wasn't the bloodiest thing we'd seen this week. In our dark hearts, Hwoarang and I drew some macabre fascination from it, as if seeing violence in its purest of forms reminded us of how similar we all were in the world.

A shiver ran down my back, raised the hairs on my arms and neck. So this was what happened when you touched the untouchable.

Within minutes, the animal keepers emerged with their tranquilizer guns and soon both wolves collapsed onto the grass, their eyes glazed and breathing slowed. Hwoarang and I didn't speak though I wondered, after seeing that dark luster in his eyes, about the violence he'd left behind. I realized he'd never told me the details of what he abandoned, what spilled blood he meant to clean but never did.

On the Greyhound four hours later Hwoarang was in the middle of telling me another joke when I opened my eyes and realized I'd fallen asleep. There was the feeling of losing something irretrievable.

"How were the dreams, She-Hulk?"

"I have a headache..."

Hwoarang ruffled my hair and threw me my sweatshirt before I could slap his hand away.

"Here. The old geezer won't turn down the AC."

"Are we in Seattle yet?"

"Just rolled in, but still gotta get to the station. Maybe another half hour?"

He started talking again, but by then I'd already fallen asleep.

* * *

The last time you came to see me it was late May, planting season, when things were supposed to grow and live. Beans, squash and corn, certainly. Love, maybe. The sky was cloudless and sleeping beauty turquoise blue. The wind unyielding. The rez quiet as a rose.

One night I drove us in my mother's car to what we rez kids called the Road to Nowhere, a government-abandoned strip of asphalt that was supposed to lead to Gallup. Instead, five miles in, it turned into a gravel and dirt road that divided into someone's driveway. It's a popular drinking spot, Nowhere. At the road's end the ground is littered with tiny shards of glass. In a corner, a pile of beer bottles and a smashed TV.

But it's a better place to look at the stars and to be alone, to feel small beneath mountains and a night with eyes.

The moon was so bright I could spot the faint outlines of dimes and pennies on the concrete, which was still warm from the day's heat. Your blonde hair turned silver. You smiled and said it was like someone had torn out the sky and shoved us into space. We sat on that hot ground where things ended and stared up into infinity, eight on its side, our shoulders touching, your breath on my face.

I come to you now, unbridled and afraid. I hope you don't notice the hardness in my hands, the shadows in my eyes, not because I've changed but because this is who I've always been.

I'm sorry I couldn't save you when they hurt you.

I'm sorry the only thing you know about snow is that it falls white from the sky.

* * *

The rain was softer in Seattle. There, my beloved Starbucks, and there, still, the ocean with its gray waves. Though I was comforted with the small memories being here again set my nerves on edge. I longed, suddenly, for arid mountains and miles of sand and red rock. You couldn't hide long in such a place. In Seattle there were shadows and weeping rain, beyond it mountains of ice and spear-like waterfalls that broke flesh.

"So, who's this friend of yours?" I asked Hwoarang, trying to ignore the city's grip on my emotions.

"Nobody, just some greasy Spaniard who took my bike as collateral," the redhead spat, quickly going silent when he realized he said too much.

"I thought you said you two were buddies," I smirked. "Something go wrong in the ring?"

"Let's just look for him, okay? Then we can get outta here."

Who said anything about leaving so quickly?

Well, maybe it's for the best…

_No. You need to close this. _

I don't need any more trouble.

_He's only alive because of me, remember? _

"Ca-bull-lay-ro Row-joe," Hwoarang said slowly, his eyes on a piece of paper he held. He butchered the Spanish, but I hadn't the energy or the care to correct him.

"Look, how bout you go find this guy and I get something to eat?" I suggested, becoming impatient. "Let's meet back here in a few hours."

Hwoarang shrugged, pocketing the piece of paper. "Whatever. Just don't, you know, go berserk."

I waved him away, watched him disappear around a cluster of buildings, and then hailed a taxi when I knew I was alone.

"Seattle University, please."

Exams were in session so campus was all but empty as I dragged myself out of the cab. A few students lingered along the sidewalks, their eyes buried in memory or book before heading to libraries and lecture halls. Two men threw a football back and forth, their sweatshirts blindingly red against the gray drizzle. Seattle Redhawks.

With a tiny smile, I realized I'd traded one red bird for another.

I walked through campus with my eyes lowered, hoping I wouldn't see any familiar faces along the way. Luckily, I faced no such encounter and discovered that my feet remembered this route too well. In minutes I was in front of the apartment complex, buzzer number eight labeled with the three-letter name that told me it was still his to live in.

_Do it. _

_ Don't. You don't know what will happen._

_ Just press the button._

_ No._

_ Now!_

"Excuse me?"

A tall blonde woman with a bag of groceries in her arms gazed down at me, her smile politely forced.

"Excuse me?" she said again, her tongue stumbling over a French accent. "I need to get through, please."

I mumbled something or other, then shuffled aside as she pressed number eight.

_Eight._

"Hello?"

_That voice._

"It's me," she chirped. _'Me?'_

The door buzzed open and the Frenchwoman entered, easily balancing the heavy bags in her grasp. I slid in behind her, following her up the carpeted stairs to the place where another life used to exist. Everything still smelled the same—until I caught a whiff of cherry perfume. Under my skin I felt the snow becoming ice. _Not now. _

Forcing myself to relax, I continued to follow her_, _relishing her complete lack of awareness. I was behind her for two flights of stairs and down the maze-like hallways, past the laundry room and twenties and teens. So was the curse of infatuation; blind to the stalking predator, she was responsive only to the needs a beautiful man could sate. I could have pushed her down the stairs and eaten those newly bought T-bone steaks had I the motivation. Instead, I watched her hustle forward in her sickly sweet white frills, swaying her hips in rhythm to the tune she hummed.

The girl's demise became more attractive a thought when number eight opened, and she was in his arms, her lips pressed on the mouth that used to say my name. He murmured something against those lips, something about her smell.

But what was said did not matter. It was only that his eyes were still that same shade of blue.

I was a ghost lingering in lost time. I didn't feel my feet stepping closer to number eight, nor my mouth when it parted in silent awe. So when that blue gaze fell on me suddenly he must have seen only a spirit that did not belong in his world. At first there was only shock in the irises, then hardness, disbelief—

—And fear.

"Julia?"

But I was already leaping down the stairs, past the glass door, hands forced into open palms lest closed fists allowed me to become something I regretted.

_"Julia!" _

The heavy slap of his barefooted pursuit behind me. The smell of cherries.

But she made me faster. She made me disappear.

* * *

The night before my mother became pregnant with me my Chinese father dreamt he found a medallion under a mountain. Etched into the medallion was a two-headed snake wrapped around a sword. He told me this when I was six, when dumping rocks out of my sneakers and chasing goats took precedence over Chinese fertility dreams.

Dad was one part philosopher and two parts alcohol. He had lots of dreams, dreams where he could tell if something bad was about to happen or if someone was going to get their lucky break. He never considered himself spiritual, though, just drunk. Two years later he'd drink himself back to Guangzhou and a second wife. Maybe he ran away because he thought I was bad luck.

"Ever since you were a little girl I've sensed a darkness in you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Dad said it was bad feng shui that the foot of my bed faced the door, and that closets and drawers were so cluttered they disturbed the natural energy of everything. He told Michelle the reason why I rarely smiled was because I was born in the year of the horse, which was bad luck if you were born female. Horses were too wild, too stubborn, too hungry for freedom. They would wander and dream and would have unrealized ambitions and would never come home if unbridled. Then Mom told him he should shut up or buy us a new home, 'cause in this crooked shack, beds faced doors and color combinations were wrong, fights and fucks could be heard through the fingernail-thin walls, and horse girls, dragon girls, wolf-snake-kangaroo-dolphin girls were all equally cherished.

Dad stopped talking about feng shui after that. He started, though, to sing about shanghaiing it to China when he thought Mom wasn't listening. _Godforsaken reservation!_

No wonder my voice likened itself better to Diné rather than Mandarin. My mother's language always felt better in my mouth, unlike the harsh, erratic tones of my father's, which slipped and slid along my tongue like ice. The words didn't stick and neither did Dad.

That night it rained, a slow dance of a thunderstorm, the blue-silver lightning as jagged as the veins in my wrists. I watched that rare desert rain and thought about my father. I wanted to drain the alcohol from his blood and tell him I had always loved him and that even though I was part Horse I'd never just run away and never look back.

He was right, of course. I ran plenty. I felt the wind. I dreamed of road. And it was lovely.

One morning he packed up his life and told me to live as I liked.

He let the Horse free after all.

* * *

When I returned downtown it was nearing midnight. Hwoarang was pacing about a street corner with someone's cell phone pressed to his ear.

"There you are!" he cried, flinging the phone away. "Where the fuck have you been? I called the cops–and I hate cops!"

"Sorry," I replied without remorse.

The nearby bench offered more comfort than companionship did, and I closed my eyes until Hwoarang's voice faded to a dull whine. The world was a game to him. How could he _dare _to worry.

"That must've been one helluva meal. Where'd you go eat, China?"

"No, but my dad did."

"What?"

And that's when it happened, softly at first, and then harder and crueler until I was bent over gasping, the laughter pulled from the pit of my stomach like long hair from a bathtub drain. It hurt to breathe and my gut clenched like a fist. But I kept laughing until tears formed and fell, and then until merciful exhaustion silenced me.

Everything was gone now, even the laughter medicine.

"Let's, um, get outta here," Hwoarang said, his eyebrows lifting. "Get you some coffee."

"I don't need any," I said slowly. "I'm more…awake…than I've ever been."

I felt it like a surge of espresso through my veins, bitter at first, then slowly pleasurable as lethargy and heartbreak were deceived into pure energy. It pushed, serrated, like a blade behind my eyes. I thought of that black sea beneath the highway bridge, the waters furious tonight because of the moon's silver spell. To have such natural darkness drown me in its cold breath.

For the first time I let her keep me until sunrise. Hwoarang would not know that it should have been a different name he murmured when she let him touch her in that hotel room at 3 a.m., the hour when all dark things walked freely. In the meantime I would drift, forget momentarily, and return with a dawn stained with fading blue night. There would be only one name in my mouth, a kiss under the number eight.

I lied there afterward, my mind creating figures and shapes out of the plaster ceiling.

"You used me."

"I need coffee."

"Fine, we won't talk about it," Hwoarang chuckled, shoving day's old cold press into my hand. "But next time you need a rebound all you have to do is ask."

Feeling more guilt than embarrassment I looked away as he collected his clothes from the floor and began to dress. Was that his smell on me?

I gulped the coffee with a wince, knowing the cold bitterness would coat my tongue for the rest of the day. Ignoring the redhead's watchful eyes I slipped into the shower to wash off the feel of his hands, which clung like dust. It was the only evidence I had of last night's events; she'd had control for longer than I ever allowed her. It was a dangerous hangover, not being able to remember anything except blue eyes gazing at a vanilla blonde girl.

Gritting my teeth, I turned the water as hot as I could stand and felt the steam rise to clog my eyes and nose. All I wanted was warmth, just for a little while to silence the snow.

As I wrapped myself in a towel I heard Hwoarang's voice, insistent over the heat that still stifled my senses.

"What!" I barked.

And I looked to where he pointed, to someone standing in the doorway.

Something shifted.

"Yepa."

They say if you know a person's true name you wield power over them. Maybe he knew of such power. Or maybe the only thing that mattered was the sound of the name, how it became beautiful in his command. Summoned in neither anger nor fear, the snow woman seemed to melt, ceased to whisper.

Here, standing simply with his sun-colored hair, was the heat I craved.

"You…"

The blue eyes softened, even as they darted to the shirtless redhead behind me.

"Can I come in?"


End file.
